Sèvres 1920-2008

La Conquête de la modernitèé

This show of porcelain, ceramic and drawings gives an overall view of 20th century and present-day art through the story of one of Europe’s most prestigious manufactories. In collaboration with the Sèvres National Porcelain Manufactory, the Rome Cultural Heritage Superintendency and the Capitoline Museums, the exhibition features works by great artists – including Jacques-Emile Ruhlmann, Louise Bourgeois, Alexander Calder, Serge Poliakoff, Pierre Alechinsky, Richard Peduzzi, Arman, Fabrice Hyber and Anne and Patrick Poirier – who helped the French Manufactory take the lead in researching and experimenting with innovative techniques.

The International Museum of Ceramics’ permanent collections will thus dialogue with Sèvres’ most recent production in a stimulating exchange between antiquity and modernity.

The Sèvres works include Bertrand Lavier’s porcelain sofa, La Bocca; Johan Creten’s sensual sculpture, Odore di Femmina de Sèvres; Pierre Soulages’ magnificent vase; Céline Cléron’s intriguing objects; Clémence van Lunen’s Dragon dans les nuages; and the amazing installation of sixty scented biscuit roses made two years ago to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the Manufactory’s establishment in Sèvres, in 1756. The show pays a special tribute to the late Italian designer Ettore Sottsass, who fashioned some of the Sèvres collection’s most innovative forms, exhibited here for the first time in Italy.